Thursday, 15 November 2012

Domingo awarded Staatsoper Ehrenring

The Ring
of Honour is the highest decoration the house bestows and last went to Waltraud
Meier in 2011* veteran Philharmoniker cellist Franz Bartolomey in June (now I remember). The ritual for this is to act surprised when ambushed with the
award at the end of a performance, in Domingo’s case last night’s Simon
Boccanegra, though he knows Austrian politics well enough to be genuinely astonished
at the rare sighting of culture minister Claudia Schmied in an actual place of
culture. Quite what prestige the Ehrenring retains is debatable, after Ioan
Holender awarded it to himself in 2004.*Meier was actually awarded the Lotte Lehmann memorial ring, a somewhat rarer honour, previously held only by Leonie Rysanek and Hildegard Behrens. On death, this ring passes to a female singer of the holder’s choice; Meier was named by Behrens.